rodenboy

I have sailed Allure and Harmony. Everything on Allure was better except for the entertainment overall (although Ice Games in Studio B on Allure is amazing!!)

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384... just booked it!

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I'm glad you asked this, I've only done Oasis class ships so far but Freedom in March 2018 is calling me. I love the itinerary on the Eastern Caribbean. What shows do Freedom offer on their sailings? I was very impressed by Chicago on my first Allure sailing and Grease was amazing on Harmony too!

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Onboard now and Captain just announced 35 knot winds.

 

I noticed about an hour ago that we were turning and heading away from land.

 

We will have a sea day today.

 

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On a previous sailing (albeit Allure) when they missed Nassau on Day 2, they returned via there in the afternoon on Day 7.

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Huge apologies about the delays on this folks, had a few unexpected hospital trips and randomly got myself a new car this week so all that paperwork etc was taking up more time than I hoped.

Hopefully I will be able to finish this at the weekend :)

Main Dining Room again on Day 5. No issues to report, we were put with the same serving staff as on Day 2 and 4 so it was great we were able to get to know those staff a little bit.

That evening, the Headliner - Abbacadabra. A choice made by Abe if you go by what he mentioned in the Captains Corner about them. He had a point, who doesn't love a bit of Abba? Second best selling album in the UK of all time, biggest Swedish pop export, biggest band globally at the time since The Beatles - it was a fair shout.

The songs were great for a tribute act, no problems. There was an issue with the guest sat directly in front of us in that there were no strobe light warnings so during one of the songs... Voulez Vous springs to mind.. when they had strobe light effects, he had to cover his eyes. He was visibly uncomfortable for the rest of the show.

The issue that I had with it was that even in between songs, the people still "acted" like the members of Abba making jokes about "their marriages" and how "they" wrote the songs. It turned what was otherwise quite a good tribute into something quite cheesy.

Day 5: San Juan

What I liked about San Juan was that it was American enough to give it a sense of familiarity, but it was unique enough to recognise as a standalone port. We hopped off the ship and onto a bus tour. We intended to do the ATV adventure but when the cost of that for four hours is higher than Disney Magic Kingdom for a day, you know you are being ripped off somewhere. We had the pleasure... :rolleyes: ... of being on this bus with some.... (whispers) Carnival cruisers. I am saying nothing other than... you knew.

Sadly, we did not see the infamous chancer... if you are a regular on the San Juan port section of this forum, you'll know.

We visited Old San Juan, the fortresses etc. We then went into New San Juan which reminded me a bit of Miami, and then back to the shops.

Overall there was no problem with this port, if we didn't see it again we wouldn't be too fussed.

Thanks I definitely will!! Where did you order it?

 

 

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Guest Services but like Angel (kdnurs) said above, you can pre-order too :)

I hope the Allure has some great prices on its 2018 summer sailings like it currently does with its Summer 2017 sailings. The other day the U.K. RCCL website was offering an Eastern itinerary Balcony stateroom for cheaper than an indoor room. I'd be happy with that....

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On this night we had arranged to see the Headliner, but we got sidetracked by the Country music in Dazzles. I wouldn't normally post about this as it was just a few talented singers singing songs by the likes of Shania Twain. It was here that my sister, who had a Select Package booked before they changed the packages, was refused a sale of a $9 glass of wine because she "didn't have the appropriate package."

Needless to say, this was not the case. We checked our bill and noticed that over the course of the two or three days, any wine or beer that we had chosen as part of the select package, we were being charged for. Guests with the Premium Package were not.

Another visit to Guest Services. The staff there removed the charges for all beers and wines and stated that this was an error because "the Select Package is still available to UK cruisers." It isn't??Either way, it seems Harmony is having lots of trouble following the drinks package rules.

They had a new rule implemented on our sailing which was "any cocktail over $15 dollars is not included in the Premium Package." Not sure if they are still going with that? Isn't it the deluxe Beverage package now? What does that include??

RCCL wonder why people abuse the drinks package rule when they can't get it right themselves. For the record, we all had our own drinks package. This wasn't the end of the drinks package issue - stay tuned!!

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Did you order the cake before you cruised or when you were on board? Tia

 

 

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On board! You should definitely think about ordering one, one of the best desserts all week!!

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MDR time.

As you will no doubt remember, we asked to be sat with the same server all week, irrespective of time. Well, tonight we were sat with the same server as on Day 2. We were told that all the reservations with our Day 1 server had been taken and that she could accommodate no more guests.

We later determined this was a lie when she saw us at the MDR for breakfast one morning and we said that we missed her; she asked why we had chosen to move.... When we said we hadn't and that we had been told she was full, the lady was not impressed with the staff at the MDR entrance. (Nor were we, but hey... I digress.) I wish the MDR drama ended here. Wait until Day 7!!

Some iphone snaps from St Maarten! (I do have better quality photos but I scaled them down for this review)

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Day 4: St Maarten

St Maarten is by far, my favourite port and once again we were not disappointed. This time we chose to explore more of the island than just Maho Beach and so we booked a tour through Bernards. I'm not sure as to whether we are allowed to advertise as such but I can give no higher recommendation to the company whatsoever. The staff were so friendly, so helpful and accommodating to our requests (we booked a Private tour) and the van, which was very spacious for five very tall guests, was also kitted out with adequate A/C and a cool box with a selection of alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages. We stopped at multiple sites including Marigot and Orient Beach (if that is the nude beach?) but I can confirm we did not comply with THAT rule haha! We also spent a good couple of hours at Maho before returning to the ship. We had been inside less than 20 minutes and the heavens opened and it poured with rain - the only rain we had the whole trip I think. One little observation - it always seems to rain in St Maarten when we stop here. Won't stop us coming back though! A wonderful day!

I just checked and they're on sale for $60 (from $95). There's some wonderfully hideous suits to choose from, definitely take a look [emoji3]

 

 

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Thanks so much :)

If you want a Christmas suit check out tipsy elves dot com. If you look right now they may have them on sale so you'll be prepared for next year, but they also may have pulled them from the site already, in which case you'll have to check back next holiday season and buy them full price. Great quality though, and well worth the price.

 

 

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I'll check it out, thank you!

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As I briefly touched upon earlier, the winds for the first few days were insane. We could barely go up to the top deck and walk across because the winds were so strong. Many of the Fine Line performances were postponed until later in the week. The winds never really calmed down the whole sailing, but they were particularly bad on the first three days. Overheard some cruisers say they had never seen anything like it. How many cruises they had been on though, were anyone's guess.

Still, the motion of the ocean made sure everyone slept like babies for the week!

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Day 3 also included the first of our two visits to the Comedy Club. Very funny, we had no issue with the fact that the comedian didn't like the Brits very much and found Indy sailings as well as the first Harmony sailing from the UK to be dire because the Brits and I quote "have a stick up their ass." I have never sailed from Southampton myself but my parents have and they find there is a huge attitude shift. The UK cruisers also don't like to hear about if you have sailed on a ship bigger than Indy. They really do love her over here!

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Enjoying this so far! Thanks for writing...

Thank you so much!! Again, sorry for the delay the last few days but I'm back now!!

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Thank you for sharing. We are sailing on HOTS on the same itinerary next year, so look forward to reading the rest of your review.

It was my favourite itinerary so far! We are looking at Allure with this itinerary for Summer 2018! Thank you for following and sorry about the delay in the posts!

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Chops Grille that evening went better! We all love Chops, it's the family's favourite "for fee" restaurant and once again it didn't disappoint. Most of the party went for the 20 ounce Porterhouse adding the additional cost onto the bill. No worries from us, we made sure we had our monies worth in sides, drinks and desserts. Then of course the cake was presented and the wait staff did a wonderful job of singing to my brother, who of course was mortified - like a true British person should be!!

The cake was absolutely gorgeous, it was a white chocolate and vanilla cake and it was probably better than most of the desserts offered by MDR the whole week! It was well worth the money and the effort, to get it!

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So, remember how on Day 1 we went to Guest Services and ordered a cake (as well as decorations for the stateroom) as we had a birthday in the house? Well, we didn't get the decorations in the stateroom at the time agreed so during the day we went down to check that the cake was still down to be delivered that evening during our meal at Chops Grille. There was no sign of the cake booking and no payment had been taken for it either. Very, very odd I think you'll agree. We were lucky we went down and checked otherwise we would have had no cake.

We think they got confused at the time of booking and only registered, and therefore charged us for the decorations. But that's digressing slightly.

While at Guest services we mentioned our decorations hadn't been delivered so they rang the deck manager who told the staff at Guest Services that the decorations had been delivered that morning, when they hadn't. We eventually received them later in the day, hours after the original time agreed. All in all, it went a bit disastrously for the birthday events planned. As a gesture of goodwill they gave us a refund for the decorations by way of an apology for the mishap. Not a Royal wow service, sadly. There is a lot to be said for booking these things in advance, something we will endeavour to do in future. That said, they didn't have our Rubicon booking either. Maybe they just really did not want us on board haha!

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Boxing Day also included our visit to Escape The Rubicon! I have to say I wasn't happy that this changed from a complementary to a "for fee" event, but my family and I all love the Escape Rooms having done some in Orlando before the sailing (and after) and some here in England. The Escape room itself was brilliant, I won't give away any spoilers other than "be precise." There was an error on Royal's booking system so although we booked and paid in advance, we didn't show up on their "roll call." I had to show my cruise planner using the Royal IQ app to get in. We escaped with literally seconds to go. Here is a picture of the group of us all. I would say that you would get maximum benefit of the game with round ten guests, we had 14 and it seemed a little crowded at times.

I hope this picture is a little smaller than the previous pictures!

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So sorry about the delay, I had a couple of hospital visits and a family dinner on Thursday but we are back in business!

Day 3: Boxing Day!

Today was the day of the CC Meet and Mingle. A quieter one compared with all my other sailings, this time it was held in Jazz On 4. Everyone was really friendly and it was great to put some faces to names. It was great to meet Angel and her family, as well as Pam's family! A lot of posters sadly didn't make it to the event but as a holiday cruise we were told to expect that in advance. In fact, we heard a breakdown that there were over 2000 non English speaking guests on this sailing and over 900 children and teenagers. I have to say, I didn't notice this. But on saying that, I don't go round checking the ages and nationalities of all the guests!

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Our group of 12 was allowed to board together and we were Platinum. I was told for every person who was Platinum and non platinum in our group could go. We had 5 so 5 were allowed and the 2 kiddies they said ohhhh just let them go:D

Hey Angel!!! I'm about to get to the part where I met you ;)